Monday, May 6, 2013

Three people were killed as the result of an explosion and fire in the 16-story building at 248-G Moskovsky Avenue in Kharkiv on Sunday, Dec.16, the press service of Kharkiv City Council has reported.

"Three people were killed, all of them residents of the building in which the explosion occured. Four other people were injured were hospitalized," reads the report from the press service of the Kharkiv City Council.

As Kharkiv Prosecutor Yevhen Popovych told a correspondent of Interfax-Ukraine, one child was among the dead.

It’s a perfectly secure Internet that by definition cannot be penetrated by wiretaps and eavesdropping — and the US government has been sitting on it for the last two-and-a-half years.

A longtime goal among cryptologists has been to perfect the “quantum Internet” — which, in the most basic way possible, uses the main principle of quantum mechanics to transfer communications from one point to another.

Still confused? Technology Review explained it as easily as possible:

“The basic idea here is that the act of measuring a quantum object, such as a photon, always changes it. So any attempt to eavesdrop on a quantum message cannot fail to leave telltale signs of snooping that the receiver can detect.”

Makes sense, right? Well it’s much easier said than done and has been a desire of computer scientists and cryptologists since the early days of the Internet. A quantum Internet connection cannot be even remotely disturbed without raising a red flag, so data sent over such a network would be transmitted in the most secure form the digital age has ever seen.

Israel played down weekend air strikes reported to have killed dozens of Syrian soldiers close to Damascus, saying they were not aimed at influencing its neighbor's civil war but only at stopping Iranian missiles reaching Lebanese Hezbollah militants.

Oil prices spiked above $105 a barrel, their highest in nearly a month, on Monday as the air strikes on Friday and Sunday prompted fears of a wider spillover of the two-year old conflict in Syria that could affect Middle East oil exports.

"There are no winds of war," Yair Golan, the general commanding Israeli forces on the Syrian and Lebanese fronts, told reporters while out jogging with troops.

"Do you see tension? There is no tension. Do I look tense to you?" he said, according to the Maariv NRG news website.

The Florida judge who presided over Casey Anthony's murder trial says he was shocked by the jury's 'not guilty' verdict because there was 'sufficient evidence' that she killed her two-year-old daughter, Caylee.

Judge Belvin Perry made the extraordinary admission in his first interview since the close of Anthony's trial nearly two years ago.

'There were two sides to Casey Anthony,' Perry told NBC's Today Show. 'There was the side that was before the jury, where she portrayed the role of a mother who had lost a child - someone who was wrongfully accused. And then you could notice the change and transformation in her when the jury went out.

'She was very commanding, she took charge of different things, and you could see her sometimes scolding her attorneys.'

Perry said he believes the jury let the young mother off the hook for first-degree murder because she was 'very manipulative' and had an extraordinarily personable lawyer.

Beate Zschaepe, 38, left, has been charged killing nine immigrant businessmen and a policewoman over a 13 year period. Prosecutors say she helped found the National Socialist Underground (NSU), faces life imprisonment if convicted. The NSU had been undetected until Zschaepe blew (far right) up her rented flat in eastern Germany a year ago and gave herself up to police. She is believed to have been locked in a macabre love triangle with Uwe Mundlos, 38, and Uwe Boenhardt, 34, (pictured) two of her alleged accomplices who were found dead last November.

Diplomats in Libya knew the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was a terrorist attack 'from the get-go,' the number-two American official in the country will testify this week.

The revelation by Gregory Hicks, the deputy chief of mission in Libya, shows that the Obama Administration knew the the September 11, 2012 attack was not the result of a popular protest over an anti-Islamic YouTube video - as the American public was initially told.

Hicks is one of three State Department 'whistle blowers' expected to appear in front of the House Oversight Committee Wednesday to give evidence of a 'coverup' by the Obama administration over its response to the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

The combined testimony is likely to re-ignite criticism of the Obama Administration's handling of the run-up to the Benghazi attacks and its handling of the aftermath.

UN investigators suspect that chemical weapons attacks in Syria were carried out by the country's rebels and not forces loyal to the regime.

Former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte told Swiss TV that a UN commission has 'strong, concrete suspicions' that rebels had used the nerve agent sarin gas.

'This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,' she said.

Her comments came as fierce fighting continued in Syria, where rebels in the east claimed to have shot down a military helicopter, and government forces defended a military air base in the north for the secnod straight day.

The comments by Ms Del Ponte, a member of the U.N. panel probing alleged war crimes in Syria, contradict claims by Britain and the U.S. that intelligence reports showed Syrian soldiers had used chemical weapons.

She said that the United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law.

The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the current strain of bird flu that is causing illness and deaths in China cannot spark a pandemic in its current form - but he added that there is no guarantee it will not mutate and cause a serious pandemic.

In an exclusive interview at the Reuters Health Summit in New York, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, said more than 2,000 people have been in contact with infected individuals, and only a handful have become ill.

Virtually all of the rest have had direct contact with poultry, the identified cause of the virus.

"This particular virus is not going to cause a pandemic because it doesn't spread person-to-person," Frieden said. "But all it takes is a bit of mutation for it be able to go person-to-person."

"I cannot say with certainty whether that will happen tomorrow, within 10 years or never."

A leading UN investigator says there are strong suspicions rebels in Syria have used the deadly nerve gas Sarin during the civil war. But Carla del Ponte also insists she has seen no evidence the government has resorted to the use of chemical weapons.

Russia and China expressed alarm on Monday over the regional repercussions of two Israeli air raids on Syria, while Israel played down strikes which its officials said targeted Iranian missiles bound for Lebanese Hezbollah militants.

Oil prices spiked above $105 a barrel, their highest in nearly a month, on Monday morning as the air strikes on Friday and Sunday prompted fears of a wider spillover of Syria's two-year-old civil war that could affect Middle East oil exports.

Israel, whose prime minister visited China on Monday in a sign of business-as-usual, sought to persuade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday that the air strikes did not aim to weaken him and dismissed the prospects of an escalation.

Authorities disrupted a terror plot and possibly saved lives when they raided a home in western Minnesota last week and recovered several guns including an assault rifle and explosive devices, the FBI said on Monday.

Federal, state and local law enforcement officers on Friday descended on the property, in Montevideo, Minnesota, where they arrested one man and recovered weapons and explosives after executing a search warrant, the FBI said in a statement.

Buford Rogers, 24, was arrested without incident and was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to a criminal complaint filed with federal court in Minnesota, the FBI said.

The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.

Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream of leaks uncritically disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way.

On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could.

Conservationists warned Monday that Hong Kong may lose its rare Chinese white dolphins, also known as pink dolphins for their unique colour, unless it takes urgent action against pollution and other threats.

Their numbers in Hong Kong waters have fallen from an estimated 158 in 2003 to just 78 in 2011, with a further decline expected when figures for 2012 are released next month, said the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society.

"It is up to the government and every Hong Kong citizen to stand up for dolphins. We risk losing them unless we all take action," said society chairman Samuel Hung.

Two weeks ago a tour guide from Hong Kong Dolphinwatch spotted a group of pink dolphins helping a grieving mother support the body of her dead calf above the water in an attempt to revive it.

In forested hills in eastern Congo, rebels are honing their ambush skills to prepare to face a new United Nations force which has a mandate to go on the offensive.

"Destroy the enemy. Cause fear and stop his patrols," a rebel officer wrote on a blackboard as he instructed uniformed M23 fighters at a camp seized from the government in Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern borderlands.

In the latest effort to bring peace to a region riven for years by conflict over ethnic rivalry and mineral riches, the United Nations is deploying a 3,000-strong brigade of African troops with a mission of neutralizing armed groups such as M23.

Israel sought to persuade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday that its recent air strikes around Damascus did not aim to weaken him in the face of a more than two-year-old rebellion.

Officials say Israel is reluctant to take sides in Syria's civil war for fear its actions would boost Islamists who are even more hostile to Israel than the Assad family, which has maintained a stable stand off with the Jewish state for decades.

But Israel has repeatedly warned it will not let Assad's ally Hezbollah receive hi-tech weaponry. Intelligence sources said Israel attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near the Syrian capital on Friday and Sunday that were awaiting transfer to Hezbollah guerrilla group in neighboring Lebanon.

Russian strategic bombers conducted flights within the U.S. defense zone close to northern Alaska and the Aleutian Islands last week in Moscow’s latest incident of nuclear saber rattling against the United States, according to defense and military officials.

Two Bear H nuclear-capable bombers were detected flying into the military’s Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) near the Aleutians, where a strategic missile defense radar is located, and Alaska’s North Slope region by the Arctic and Chukchi Seas on April 28 and 29, military officials told the Washington Free Beacon.

Lt. Cmdr. Bill Lewis, a spokesman with the U.S. Northern Command, confirmed the fighter intercept of the latest bomber incursion but declined to provide details.

“Two U.S. F-22′s from Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, were launched and visually identified Russian aircraft on the night of April 28, as the Russian Air Force flew standard out of area flights near Alaska,” Lewis said.

Israel’s two air force strikes on Syria in three days – the second targeting the emblems of Assad rule overlooking Damascus from Mt. Qassioun – appear to be part of a tactical plan put together by the US Israel, and two Sunni powers, Turkey and Qatar, to break up the Tehran-Damascus-Beirut radical bloc and eventually force Iran to give up its nuclear bomb aspirations.

This is how it will be interpreted by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Bashar Assad and Hassan Nasrallah as they prepare their responses for the Israeli attacks.

Without officially confirming those strikes ever took place, Israel insisted that its air force and rockets singled out the advanced Iranian weapons waiting in Syria for transfer to Hizballah - and Hizballah itself. This message was designed for a purpose: It was meant to support Washington’s argument to Moscow that Israel had not aimed its bombs and rockets against Assad and his army – only the Iranian and Hizballah military presence in Syria.

But it didn’t quite work that way, because no one in Damascus slept a wink early Sunday, May 5, as Israel rocket blasts shook the city in what was described as a 4 magnitude earthquake and inflicted heavy casualties – not on the Hizballah brigades fighting in Syria, but Syrian elite units stationed around Mt. Qassioun.

The columns of fire over Damascus flashing across world screens caused the Assad regime and army serious loss of face.

The Chinese mainland confirmed another two cases of H7N9 infection last week, bringing the total to 129, according to official statistics released on Monday.

From 4 p.m. on May 1 to 4 p.m. on May 6, two people, both found in southeast China's coastal Fujian Province, were confirmed to have been infected with the new type of bird flu, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Among the total number of infected persons, 31 have died so far, with 42 recovered.

Russia said on Monday it was concerned the chances of foreign military intervention in Syria were growing following reports of Israeli air strikes around Damascus which were a source of "particular alarm".

"We are seriously concerned by the signs of preparation of global public opinion for possible armed intervention in the long-running internal conflict in Syria," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement.

He suggested those concerns stemmed in part from media reports about the alleged use of chemical weapons in the conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people in two years.

India and China have ended a three-week standoff on a windswept Himalayan plateau where they fought a war 50 years ago by agreeing to pull forces back to positions held before the confrontation, India's foreign ministry said on Monday.

The two countries packed up tents and left the disputed patch on the 5,000-metre-high (16,000-foot) Depsang Plain late on Sunday. But it had not been clear how far they had withdrawn.

Neither side has given details of the terms of the deal.

India says up to 50 Chinese soldiers intruded into its territory on the western rim of the Himalayas on April 15. Some officials and experts believe the incursion signaled Chinese concern about increased Indian military activity in the area.

Libertarian activist and radio host, Adam Kokesh plans to lead an armed march on Washington, D.C. this Independence Day.

Launched as a group on Facebook, the "Open Carry March on Washington" hopes to get 1,000 supporters to march into the nation's capital with loaded rifles.

The group plans to meet at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. From there, they will march across the Memorial Bridge into Washington, D.C. and continue down Independence Avenue.

The Facebook page states:

"This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny."

The event is said to be non-violent and states that if the group is met with physical resistance, they will turn back.

"There's a remote chance that there will be violence as there has been from government before, and I think it should be clear that if anyone involved in this event is approached respectfully by agents of the state, they will submit to arrest without resisting," the event's page reads.

At least 28 people have been killed after Bangladeshi police clashed with Islamists demanding a new blasphemy law.

Police officials said that about 200,000 people had marched to the centre of the capital Dhaka on Sunday, where fierce clashes erupted between thousands of rock-throwing protesters and security officials.

Witnesses said rioting broke out after police tried to intercept stick-wielding protesters, most travelling from remote villages, in front of the country's largest mosque. Trouble then spread to central districts of Dhaka.

A senior Israeli official accused Google on Monday of setting back Middle East peace hopes by putting the name "Palestine" under the banner of its search page for the Palestinian territories. (www.google.ps)

Palestinians hailed Google's move as a virtual victory on the long path to the state they seek in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, which Israel seized in the 1967 war.

With bilateral negotiations stalled for 2-1/2 years over Jewish settlement building, the Palestinians have campaigned for foreign recognition of statehood, and were upgraded to "non-member state" at the United Nations in November.

f any doubt remains that the world stands shivering in a cold moral vacuum -- devoid of meaningful leadership -- they are quickly fading.

The starkest example came in Washington on Tuesday, when President Barack Obama, inarguably the world's most powerful man, stood before the press and recited a series of positions, some of them built on solid moral arguments, only to conclude that there is not much he can do to turn them into reality.

Obama explained at length why the world cannot tolerate the use of chemical weapons in Syria, why the U.S. should not keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay, why Washington is acting foolishly with the infamous "sequester" -- the blunt and unjust budget cutter. But then he went on to explain just how difficult it is to do anything to solve these problems.

Iran has no doubt Syria will deal a "crushing response" to Israel and the Shiite regime stands ready to train its ally's soldiers, officials in Tehran have said.

The remarks, delivered by various Iranian officials and reported in state media, came Sunday after Syria claimed that Israel launched a fresh attack inside its borders.

"As a Muslim and friendly country, we stand by Syria and if there is need for training, we will provide them with necessary training," Brig. Gen. Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan, commander of the Iranian Army's Ground Forces, told reporters Sunday.

On any given Monday, Motijheel -- the commercial center of Dhaka -- is a bustling, chaotic mess of rickshaws and cars jockeying for space in overcrowded streets with an equally determined mass of pushing, shoving pedestrians.
This Monday was different.

For the first time since written weather history began in Arkansas (1819), snow has fallen in the month of May. This snow has set records for the latest snowfall and latest measurable snowfall in the state.

The previous latest snowfall ever recorded was on April 30, 1903 at Harrison, Gravette and Fayetteville. This was not measurable.

The previous latest measurable snowfall was 0.2 inches at Corning on April 24, 1910.

"The economic situation is worsening from month to month, and unemployment has reached a level that puts democratic structures ever more in doubt," he said.

"The Germans have not yet realised that southern Europe, including France, will be forced by their current misery to fight back against German hegemony sooner or later," he said, blaming much of the crisis on Germany's wage squeeze to gain export share.

Mr Lafontaine said on the parliamentary website of Germany's Left Party that Chancellor Angela Merkel will "awake from her self-righteous slumber" once the countries in trouble unite to force a change in crisis policy at Germany's expense.

His prediction appeared confirmed as French finance minister Pierre Moscovici yesterday proclaimed the end of austerity and a triumph of French policy, risking further damage to the tattered relations between Paris and Berlin.

U.S. President Barack Obama gives the commencement address to the graduating class of The Ohio State University at Ohio Stadium on May 5, 2013 in Columbus, Ohio.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted.

Sent in by Reader: These speeches are sounding more and more like someone from the past. Someone with the same view.

Obama urged the large crowd to "reject" cynicism about government in an age of legislative gridlock and political divisiveness.

"We have never been a people who place all our faith in government so solve our problems, nor do we want it to. But we don’t think the government is to the source of all our problems, either,” Obama said. “As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us.”

Then who is the source of the problem? The ones that he is telling these young minds to not listen too.

To quote HItler...

"It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize
that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence
of the nation, that the position of the individual is conditioned solely
by the interests of the nation as a whole

The euro zone's business downturn dragged on in April, suggesting the region may be falling deeper into recession this quarter, business surveys showed on Monday.

The purchasing managers indexes (PMIs) also showed that Germany is now suffering a contraction in business activity that has long dogged France, Italy and Spain.

Markit's Eurozone Composite PMI, which gauges activity across thousands of companies and is seen as a good gauge of economic conditions, edged up in April to 46.9 from 46.5 in March, marking an improvement on an initial reading of 46.5.

Police fear a retired park ranger accused of gunning down his daughter-in-law before fleeing into the wilderness of upstate New York seven-months ago is alive and still on the run.

Authorities previously believed that 73-year-old Eugene Palmer of Stoney Point was dead after escaping into Herriman State Park only moments after allegedly admitting to committing the cold-blooded crime.

After a manhunt failed to retrieve a body from the woods, Sgt. George Lutz of the Haverstraw Police Department told Fox News: 'We consider him to be armed and dangerous.'

One of the Benghazi 'whistle-blowers' will claim that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to chop the State Department's own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making in the aftermath of the attacks, it was revealed on Sunday.

On Wednesday, the three State Department officials will appear on Capitol Hill before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to talk about the September 11, 2012, assault on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Fox News reported on Sunday that witness Mark I. Thompson, who was once a marine, will make the allegations against Clinton and Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy.

A former FBI counterterrorism agent has hinted at a vast and intrusive surveillance network used by the U.S. government to monitor its own citizens.

Tim Clemente admitted as much when he appeared on CNN Wednesday night.

Discussing the Boston Marathon attack and past telephone conversations of Katherine Russell and her now deceased husband, suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Clemente said that those conversations would be available to investigators.

Clemente discussed the issue in this exchange with host Erin Burnett, as recorded by the CNN transcript.

BURNETT: ' Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?'

CLEMENTE: 'No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.'

BURNETT: 'So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.'

CLEMENTE: 'No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.'

On this day in several regions in China, local people
held protests against local polluting projects.
In Kunming, Yunnan province, thousands of citizens
took to the streets, opposing a local oil refinery plant.
In Shanghai Songjiang district, thousands of people
besieged the city hall to resist a polluting battery plant.
In both cities, large numbers of police arrived at the scene,
however no clash ensued.

China's netizen released a message, that Yunnan authorities
had approved Petro China'sPX project in Anning, Kunming city.
Local netizens then initiated a protest on May 4th.

Office of the Ministry of Agriculture released Information on May 5, the National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory report detected that environmental samples were positive for the H7N9 avian influenza in Shandong after collecting 412 samples from Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province, Xingfu Road market. Jiangxi animal disease prevention and control center collected samples to be tested by the National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory, Several were found positive for H7N9 avian influenza, chicken samples from a business point of Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, Nanchang County to the Town.

Ministry of Agriculture has asked the Shandong Province, Jiangxi Province, Guangdong Province, in strict accordance with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal H7N9 avian influenza emergency response guide (Trial) "do a good job related to disposal. At the same time to further strengthen the H7N9 avian influenza virus monitoring the effective implementation of prevention and control measures.

Up to now, the National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory detected a total of 51 H7N9 avian influenza positive samples.

The surviving member of a neo-Nazi cell blamed for a series of racist murders that scandalized Germany and shamed its authorities goes on trial on Monday in one of the most anticipated court cases in recent German history.

The chance discovery of the gang, the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which had gone undetected for more than a decade, has forced Germany to acknowledge it has a more militant and dangerous neo-Nazi fringe than previously thought, and exposed staggering intelligence failings.

The trial in Munich will focus on 38-year-old Beate Zschaepe, who is charged with complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman between 2000-2007, as well as two bombings in immigrant areas of Cologne, and 15 bank robberies.

Gunmen executed two sons of two prominent Mexican journalists in the northern city of Chihuahua, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office said on Sunday, and police found seven bodies dumped in a Mexico City suburb.

Alfredo Paramo, 20, and Diego Paramo, 21, were shot dead in Chihuahua early on Saturday after being chased through the streets by gunmen in a car, said spokesman Carlos Gonzalez.

They are the sons of well-known Mexican financial journalist David Paramo, who hosts a radio show, appears on TV Azteca and has a national newspaper column, and Martha Gonzalez, the editor of the local El Peso newspaper.

Honey bees, which play a key role in pollinating a wide variety of food crops, are in sharp decline in the United States, due to parasites, disease and pesticides, said a federal report released on Thursday.

Genetics and poor nutrition are also hurting the species, which help farmers produce crops worth some $20 billion to $30 billion a year.

Honey bee colonies have been dying and the number of colonies has more than halved since 1947, said the report by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department.

The decline raises doubt about whether honey bees can fulfill their crucial role in pollinating crops that play a role in about one-third of all food and beverages sold in the United States, the report said.